the world's deadliest weapon

the paper shuriken

funny stories, amusement, hunger, and my blog

all are closely related. i searched for "funny story", "amusing", and "hungry" in my blog and came up with quite a few matches. i initially searched for "funny story" because i wanted to read something funny that had happened in the past. (you know, whenever you start telling a funny story you say "oh yeah, funny story..." or at least i do.) then i searched for "amusing" for the same reason. then i decided i was feeling hungry (which i still am, because i have only oatmeal and toast to eat :( ) and wondered how many times i'd mentioned that i was hungry whilst posting in my blog. quite a few.

so, to follow suite: i'm hungry. unfortunately i have no funny stories to tell, or anything amusing to say. finals week is bearing down on me and i am simply not in the mood to do homework. and i'm hungry. for something sweet. (not toast and oatmeal.)

been watching bleach lately. i skipped a bunch between the introductory episodes and when ichigo and company break into the soul society to rescue rukia (say that ten times fast). i've since decided that hitsugaya is my favorite. he's just one cool kid. renji's pretty cool too. interestingly enough, the endless bleach website compared the relationship of ichigo and renji to goku and vegeta (renji being vegeta and ichigo being goku). that was rather amusing (HA! there it is! this post contains both "amusing" and "hungry" in context! damn i'm too predictable o_O ).

hmm, well, i'm going to go remedy my hunger by snacking on some toast. or maybe oatmeal. i also have nutri-grain bars too (forgot about those...) farewell! (or don't fare well, your call)

my toes are cold

but what else is new? most of the time, my toes are cold and i don't even notice it. why? because, like i said, they're cold most of the time. same goes for my fingers. though it's funny when my right hand is way colder than my left because i'm only using the mouse on the computer. you know what i mean?

anyway, i digress. i had something way more interesting to say, i swear. i think of fun stuff to say all the time, but it's when i'm out somewhere or at work or driving in my car, and usually i'm alone when i think of them. thus i end up talking to myself sometimes. usually under my breath, or else people would stare at me funny or think i'm talking to them. but by the time i get home and have access to my computer and the internet, i've already forgotten anything i had to say. so many words go to waste in my brain. well... maybe not to waste.

aha! i've just remembered something to say! (well, actually i remembered a few minutes ago, but i had to finish my previous point...) when i was at barnes and nobles the other day i was strolling through the non-fiction stuff and came across a section dedicated solely to computers and the internet. one particular book caught my eye: YouTube for Dummies. ...youtube ...for dummies... honestly, how can anyone not understand youtube? i don't doubt there are people out there who can't, but i think most of them don't because they haven't tried and don't care anyway (grandparents and other elderly people most likely). but seriously. they're not kidding when they say "for dummies". there was also a book entitled Hacking MySpace. now that one was downright scary. myspace is supposedly dangerous enough as it is and they're encouraging people to hack it?! turns out it was actually tips on how to get yourself noticed on myspace for business and "networking" purposes. i think they shoulda picked a more appropriate title. still, it did catch my attention, so i suppose they did something right. i've sold a bit of my soul to the masses and made myself a myspace account, by the way. but i'm proud to say i still retain my me-ness by boycotting ...attractive... pictures of myself and continuing to post ones where i'm making some sort of strange or unusual face.

there was something else i wanted to say a few days ago. but once again it escapes me.

my cell phone won't let me text message anymore and i don't know why. :( dammit. it's not like i send that many messages even to begin with.

hmm, listening to the nutcracker suite which i purchased from itunes. very christmasy.

i'm supposed to be solidifying ideas for possible subjects for my final project in intro theatre. ...yeah, so much for that. i'll probably end up slapping something together at one am when i decide i'm too tired to stay up anymore. i do that alot. i still need to read a play script too. and horticulture homework. and stuff to read for american lit. homework sucks. it always has... and it always will.

caffeine conspiracy

go to Ill Will Press and listen to foamy. now.


No bumper sticker today. Sorry.

another change in scenery

hmm, so yes. this is what my blog used to look like when i first started it. here's the deal: i tried to change it to a couple different layouts made by other people, but that was proving difficult and the coding was being uncooperative. then i thought about using an old layout again, but i was being lazy and didn't feel like updating the coding (i was too tired after dealing with the uncooperative coding...). thus, i used a template provided by blogger. it was a lot quicker, despite the fact i still had to re-enter all my links. actually, that ended up being all copy-paste, so it wasn't so bad.

i came to a realization today while sitting outside horticulture lab (which i still keep wanting to call herbology... me and my harry potter fixation...) waiting to take the practical quiz we had today (that i didn't know about because i skipped las week) and fretting over how i was going to totally fail (because i didn't know any of the material because, once again, i skipped last week). it's worse sitting (or standing or whatever) there in the classroom not knowing any of the answers or knowing you're not going to know any of the answers beforehand than it is actually receiving the paper back with the failing grade written on it. at least i think so anyway. i suppose it would be different if you think you did well and get your paper back saying you failed, but usually that's not the case with me. in retrospect, the quiz wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. there were a handful of questions that i knew the answers to from listening in lecture (sometimes i listen, sometimes i doodle in my notebook, and today i fell asleep during a video). there was also something else i came to realize today, but i completely forgot what it was.


yeah, so i've been utterly rotting my brain (not that i'm regretting it or not enjoying it) watching naruto on veoh. i was watching episodes on youtube, but the videos on veoh are generally better quality and aren't divided into twos and threes. there was a couple i downloaded from endless naruto, but it only let me download one episode a day (unless i paid actual money and opened a "premium" account on the video host they use). so next i really wanted to just download them all from dattebayo, but i couldn't get bittorrent to work fast enough for me (i am NOT going to wait nine days for it to work it's magic on one movie file). hmm, yeah... what was i getting at..... can't really remember...... though, i've gotta say, ten-ten is way cooler in the shippuuden series than she was in the original series. one, because she isn't wearing pink anymore (yes, i'm horribly biased against most things pink) and two, because it appears she's way better at fighting than before. though, to be fair, all you saw of her fighting abilities in the first part of the series was when she got her ass kicked by temari (who was always cool and is one of my favorites). unless she did more fighting sometime during the long string of filler episodes (which i skipped, as advised to by joe).

that's about all for now... i think i'm gonna go to sleep now, tomorrow i'm going down to plattsmouth, then coming back into bellevue with my mom to watch my brother do his thing with the male cheerleaders for the homecoming pep rally. apparently they're doing west side story, part of the brady bunch "keep on dancin'" dance, and some other stuff i can't remember. it sounds like it'll be pretty funny.



EDIT: i remembered!!! i learned today in horticulture lab that if you eat a few pounds or more (or maybe it was a pound or more) of apple seeds that you'll die from cyanide poisoning. crazy, huh?

long delayed vacation pictures

well, before i get to posting some pictures from my family vacation, i'd just like to state that, apparently, there will be no house-warming(ish) party. um... sorry?

anyway, here's the pictures. we went to lake of the ozarks. click to see the full sized images.

here's me, my brother, and my dad by the bagnall dam (i think that's what it was called.)


here's me on the deck boat (a lot like a speed boat) we rented one morning.


matt on one of his water-skiing attempts:


me (top image) and matt (bottom image) tubing:




matt being weird (and me making a "uh... what are you doing?" face) at the ozark bbq restaurant:


this is a camera ham of a camel that we passed all the time on our way to town from the cabin where we were staying:


matt and dad posing for the camera in the cabin:


dad, matt, and i in the bridal cave (my mom was taking all the pictures, if you haven't figured that out yet.)

moving (again)

yep, it's official! as of next friday we'll be moving into a townhouse in ralston. lindsey (a girl jessie and i work with) and jessie will have the bedrooms upstairs and i'll be taking the basement and converting it into my bedroom. it'll be a long and possibly tedious process, so i'll take pictures to post. that'll be fun. you see, i'll be makin my own ceiling and a couple of "walls" out of curtains. this should be interesting indeed. over the last week i've been at my parents' house switching bedrooms with matt, so i recently went through all my stuff there. now i just have to do it again here. luckily there's not nearly as much stuff here anyway. i kinda want to get started, but i just don't know where to start. there's that and the fact that i haven't procured any boxes from work to put anything in.

it'll certainly be nice to get away from all this construction... our... uh, beautiful view of the parking lot has become an even more gorgeous view of a torn up parking lot. my friend zack said it reminded him of a radioactive wasteland or something. we have to park over a couple lots behind durham and walk all the way around the dorm building. it's a real pain in the ass.

anyway, i think jessie wants to have a housewarming-type party after we get moved in, so be expecting phone call invitations, got it?

something new

well, i felt the need to change my blog layout yet again. however, i didn't make this one; i'd just like to make that perfectly clear. why? because i'm just plain not this good. that and i still haven't managed to get a hold of photoshop 7.0 (i have the CS2 upgrade, but nothing to upgrade it from.... it was cheaper to do things this way).

not much else going on right now. still working on the audio skit; we're making pretty good progress. i'll post a link to the finished version when we're done as well as a link to the comics it corresponds to for anybody unfamiliar with it. we had to adapt the dialogue, of course, since there's a severe lack of visual aids in a radio play :P which is where i get the line "relax... i'm just wiping some pizza sauce off your lip" from. in the original comic you just see the character doing the said action.

yeah, so our cable's been turned off; the roommate who was in charge of the cox bill is officially moving out tomorrow... er, today, and we didn't bother restarting it since we'll be moving out shortly anyway.

i got a new harvest moon game recently too! it has successfully sucked out my soul and fed my semi-good/acceptable sleeping habits to hell. this is why i've had trouble getting to work on time lately (¬_¬)… well, at least the novelty is wearing off and hopefully i can get back to going to bed at a semi-decent hour and getting up before two o'clock in the afternoon. (looks like i won't be starting that tonight though...)

i cleaned out my make-shift easle corner when i was at my parents' this weekend. it was scary. at any moment i coulda run into that big, hairy spider that i saw scamper into the shadows back there a few months ago. luckily, i didn't. just a lot of dead ladybugs. and a dead beetle-thing. that was really creepy... i found lots of cool stuff i forgot i had, though. like about five or six old notebooks full of original writing and fanfiction (by me) and a couple drawings of our comic characters (from oh, so long ago) done by joe and presumably jessie as well. i found two old cougar callers, my test book for the PSAT (not even sure when i took that one... @_@ ), all the cards from my nineteenth birthday (though i pretty much have every birthday card i've ever received in a shoebox in my closet...), all the hand-outs (and notes) i received my senior year in english (i gave those to matt), all my statistics notes (also from senior year), a couple old newspaper funnies sections, my old broken portable CD player, my old portable cassette tape player, and a bunch of trash (i didn't throw any of that other stuff away... just reorganized it). it really brought back some memories!


i'd probably keep it too...

webcomic audio skit

yeah, i just felt like posting this (i'm so proud of myself!): i recently auditioned for a part in a fan-made audio skit for one of the webcomics i read, El Goonish Shive, and i got a part! i play ellen dunkel, one of the eight main characters.

this is my audition (i recoreded a couple other auditions as well, for other characters, but this is the one i got) and this is the page that it corresponds to. (you'll want to look at the page whilest listenting to the audition to understand what the hell is going on.)

even more recently, each cast member has written/is writing an introduction for their character, sort of as a warm-up, get a feel for your character sort of thing. mine is here. (oh, by the way, i address the audience as "bunnies," that's because fans of el goonish shive are often referred to as "bunnies." weird, i know, but the whole comic is weird, so whatever.)

oh, this is gonna be so much fun!

fate is so cruel

yeah, so i was doing a bit of name-research for a story i'm working on, and wound up doing heritage research just for the hell of it. so while perusing wikipedia, i came across a little paragraph about the genetics of lithuanians (my dad's side of the family). it said, and i quote "Lithuanians are among the tallest people in the world. The average height of males is 181.3 cm (about 6'), and that of females is 167.5 cm (about 5'6")." my initial reaction was calling the article a bastard (it's two in the morning, okay? bear with me, will you?) and saying dammit several times. after a minute of glaring at my computer screen, i remembered how my dad's two brothers (uncle john and uncle bob) was/is (respectively) +6'. My cousins Jason and Jessica also managed to fall into that nice little statistic. For the most part i take after my dad's side of the family: my eyes are lighter, my hair is lighter (in comparison to matt's and what my mom's was before she started turning grey :P ), and my facial structure generally resembles my dad. but did i get even an ounce of that height gene? no. and it wasn't bad enough that i'm the shortest on my dad's side (except maybe my grandma... but i think she's shrunk a bit since her prime), but i had to go and end up being the shortest on my mom's side as well! dammit anyway!

oh you won't believe this...

yeah, so i was walking down to the mail boxes to mail my car payment and it's raining outside. before i left i specifically changed from pants to shorts so i wouldn't get my pants all wet. (and i brought an umbrella too, by the way). anywho, i notice on my way to the mail boxes that the freaking sprinklers were on! not only that, but they were watering the damn sidewalk! AND as i was about to reach the stairs, one just randomly turned on and squirted right at me! no umbrella can protect you from direct side attacks. now my shorts are all wet... dammit anyway...

"organic" food

yeah, so what's the deal with "organic" food, you know? firstly, it's rather ironic that you can have "organic" and "non-organic" apples. how are apples not organic? they're fruit for christssake! you can't get much more organic than that. so while i was in the doctor's office waiting room waiting (duh) to get a vaccine-shot-thing i noticed an issue of Time magazine sitting on the table next to me. the cover was featuring an article about "organic" produce. this is where i finally found out what the hell makes "organic" produce more organic than the rest of it. it's pesticides. people are afraid that they're gonna get cancer and die if they eat produce with pesticides on it. uh, hel-lo! didn't they teach you to wash-your-food before you eat it when you were a kid? and yeah, i know that just washing off your apple isn't gonna decontaminate it, but seriously, why do they care? we've all been eating pesticides for the past at least half a century and just NOW they're afraid of getting sick from it? obviously we've been doing fine so far, seeing as we're not dead or anything. not only that but the article specifically stated that they can't even prove that pesticides will give you cancer. (yeah, sure, maybe if you downed a gallon of straight pesticide a day, but what's been sprayed on your fruit is hardly a fraction of that.)

it all reminds me of this conversation that jessie and i had with our roommate margaret about her organic something-or-other. she said she'd accidentally bought the "non-organic" stuff and we asked what the difference was (i think it may have been spaghetti sauce). she said that since there was a word listed in the ingredients that she couldn't pronounce, so it wasn't organic. jessie and i both agreed that that was no proof. after all, you've got things like sodium penthanol and hydrocholic acid in ORGANIC chemistry. you could also throw dihydrogen oxide in there too, and, hell, that's just plain water!

anyway, so these people are worried about what they'll catch if they eat food with pesticides on it, BUT have they ever stopped to wonder what they could catch from food that is grown without it? all sorts of things that pesticides kill off could grow in them like mold and rot and insect larva or whatever. i think i'd rather chance the light spray of pesticides (seeing as it hasn't killed me yet) over eating fungi.

if you ask me this is yet another case of people overreacting and getting into some paranoid craze like so many other things lately. things like "don't spank your kids" (so they'll turn into rotten little brats!), "keep children completely sanitized" (so they'll grow up with no immune system), "vaccinate kids agains chicken pox" (so they'll catch them as adults and possibly die from the more severe strain that adults always catch), and the list can go on and on. all these things that our generation and older have grown up with and we've obviously turned out just fine! seriously, all this crap does is piss me off.

let's see if this works...

hmm, wondering why i haven't posted in a while? well, firstly i haven't had much to say lately, and secondly blogger continues to be a pain in the ass about letting me publish! i'll type everything up and it'll publish a blank post. grr...

yes, so in case you haven't seen my new facebook profile picture, for those of you devoid of facebook, here it is:



we had a contest at work to see who would wear the most green. despite the fact that other than the green hair, i only had on a green shirt and socks (and the bandana, as you can see), i somehow managed to be in the top four. and i must say i'm rather proud of that.

death forecaster

i thought this was fairly amusing:

Anne's Death Forecast

i went back and changed it to two long-lived grandparents since i couldn't remember how old my mom's dad is and it added a whopping two years onto my life.

check your death forecast

actroids

joe was showin' me this yesterday:GameTrailers.com - All Media Search

they're actual, factual robot girls...

i should feel so discriminated upon

yea, so they were doing some poll at work; everybody had to fill out this sheet saying what their ethnicity was. so i scanned the list and was happy to see that the last option was titled "two or more races". unfortunately this happiness was short lived as the full line was "two or more races (not hispanic or latino)". seriously, what the hell? am i statistically impossible and not supposed to exist? lesser people would sue over crap like this. then i noticed several of the choices had the hispanic exclusion clause next to them (including white, but i've run into that one before). so i asked the girl who was manning customer service at the time (that's where we get out paychecks) what she thought. she said i should just check both hispanic and white, to hell with what the company thinks - they were the ones who asked. so once again, in revealing my ethnicity i completely contradict my identity. i am hispanic and at the same time, NOT hispanic (white). i know what it means, it's just funny to think of the irony and utter ridiculousness of the whole thing.

testing...

i haven't been able to post anything on blogger successfully for weeks! (our new year's present to you, anne. -blogger) yea, thanks for nothin'... i also emailed inquiring about my problem and have yet to receive a reply. i'll probably get one now after the problem has remedied itself saying "well, we made a test post and it worked fine, and it seems you've managed to post successfully too" yes, that was so helpful....

anywho, if you haven't heard yet, i've got a new computer! and oh, it's SO cool! and to all of you who have taken my "how well do you know anne?" quiz: i made it hard on purpose and riddled it with trick questions (as i'm sure you've found out, heheh...).

jessie and i are now actively looking for people to replace us in our leases, but to no avail. we got one phone call (she left a message on jessie's phone), and jessie called her back and left a message, but she hasn't called back yet. jessie asked this girl if she was willing to wait until we find a second person to take over the other lease, but, like i said, she didn't call back. oh whatever...